Though hardly startling, as I'm sure most of us know how we feel when we fail to get our beauty sleep, the study nevertheless helps reinforce the importance of sleep in our daily cycles. Just like how the human body requires food on a regular basis to keep us healthy and energized, sleeping plays a similar role. Our bodies need to rest on a regular basis to recharge, unwind and rest. Some people require a solid 8 hours of sleep every night to be able to concentrate and function properly the next day. For others, like me for example, we can get by with slightly less.
Resting is something that we shouldn't overlook, no matter how bust our lives are. Sure, sometimes things can get a little crazy, and we end up working late into the night, hitting the pillows for a few hours, and then getting up and starting the whole process over. It's not so bad if that's something we only do on occasion, and then make sure to rest up afterwards, but when it starts to become a habit we need to start watching out.
Apart from making us grumpy (a scientific fact!) a continued lack of sleep, or having an insufficient amount of sleep several days running, can lead to several health problems. For one, when our body is over exerting itself, we open ourselves up to the potential of getting catching a cold more easily and then being tired AND sick. Worse yet, sleep deprivation can start to affect our appetites too.
How often do you find yourself waking up in the morning, dead tired, with breakfast the last thing on your mind? It happens to me every now and then, and sometimes I just grab a coffee instead and hold off until lunch. Not providing our body with the food it needs is bad enough, but it only gets worse if we have go an entire week without the proper amount of sleep. We might stary by skipping breakfast, but then lunch comes next, and so forth. Our appetites can change faster than we know it.
So where does that leave us then when we just don't feel like we have the time to get enough sleep? Well, there are a few tricks to getting the most out of a small amount of sleep.
Studies have shown that our bodies go through cycles when we sleep. Each cycle normally lasts around 90 minutes, whereupon it is not uncommon for us to wake up briefly, and then fall right back to sleep without even noticing. Waking up in the middle of a cycle often causes us to feel incredibly sleepy, regardless of how much we actually slept before. So sometimes, if you wake up after 6 hours of sleep (4 cycles) you will actually feel better and function more efficiently than if you awoke after 6 1/2 hours of sleep, midway through a cycle.
One way to avoid feeling so tired when you wake up is to try to plan your sleeping to fit along the pattern of your sleep cycles. For instance, try to set your alarm to go off 6 hours and fifteen minutes after you set it. This way you will be giving yourself 15 minutes to fall asleep, and then a full four sleep cycles. 6 hours sure doesn't sound as nice as 8 hours, but you might be surprised to find out that you don't feel all that bad in the morning.
Of course, another way to make sure you're going to have a meal in the morning, is to order it ahead of time to arrive at your place. 21st Century Food delivers light, easy to eat breakfasts (even coffee!) such as yogurts and pancakes, so that even if you're not in the mood for frying up some bacon in the morning, your stomach might cause you to change your mind when you get your hands on one of our meals.
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